Dutch backpacker held hostage in Melbourne hotel room says she will never get over ordeal

Mark Russell

A Dutch backpacker who was held hostage for six weeks by a couple in a Melbourne hotel room - and repeatedly raped and bashed - has told a judge she will never get over her terrifying ordeal.

"There is always a dark cloud following me," the woman, 23, told County Court judge Frank Gucciardo on Wednesday during a pre-sentence hearing for one of her attackers, Jennifer Peaston.

Peaston, 34, pleaded guilty to two charges of intentionally causing injury to the victim in room 355 of the Rydges Bell City complex in Preston in December 2012.

Her co-accused, Alfio Anthony Granata, 48, pleaded guilty on Monday to nine counts of rape, one count of intentionally causing serious injury, two counts of making threats to kill, one count of threatening to inflict serious injury, two counts of possessing a drug of dependence and one count of theft.

The pair had been due to stand trial on Monday before the Director of Public Prosecutions agreed to drop dozens of charges against them in exchange for their guilty pleas.

The victim, reading her victim impact statement from a remote facility, said she was in "a black hole of pain and sorrow".

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The Dutch woman said she was mixed up and angry over what had happened to her and was now afraid of people.

After being told she would have to return to Australia to give evidence at Granata and Peaston's trial, she said she would faint two or three times a day.

She had tried to have relationships since her ordeal but said she would go crazy if anyone touched her.

The victim said she had had to leave the small Dutch village where her parents lived and move to the city because everyone in the village knew what she had gone through.

She told the judge she had been receiving counselling for more than two years and could not move on with her life until Granata and Peaston had been sentenced for what they had done.

"I don't go out at night. I feel like something terrible will happen again."

Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, told the court the victim had met Granata and Peaston at a party in St Kilda before later agreeing to go to their hotel room and have a threesome.

They would smoke an 'ice' pipe together and became good friends before Granata turned violent. He became paranoid that the two women were having sex behind his back and would regularly beat them.

Ms Rogers said that on one occasion Granata carved a cross into the victim's forehead saying it meant she belonged to him and was "marked for death" for betraying him.

The prosecutor said Granata claimed he had killed 248 people but had never been caught because he was very clean and precise.

He told the victim and Peaston they would be numbers 249 and 250.

Ms Rogers said Granata told the victim he was possessed by demons, the spirit of his grandfather and one of his ancestors called 'Toto'.

At one stage he forced the victim and Peaston to lie on the floor in a lover's embrace with their eyes closed while he took photos. He told them this was how they would be placed in their grave.

The victim, who was abused with a meat tenderiser, knife and sex toys, decided to kill herself after Granata put her toenails and fingernails, blood, hair and passport photograph in an envelope as part of a "ritual", saying this was all that would be left of her after he had killed her.

Granata and Peaston later panicked and called triple-0 after the victim self-harmed on Christmas Day because she "just didn't want to suffer any more".

Ms Rogers said the victim was found to have had 54 separate injuries to her body.

Peaston later told police she had been in a relationship with Granata for about five years and he would sometimes "flip" but she stuck by him because she loved him.

Peaston claimed Granata had regularly abused her in the past but it was worse when they had been with the Dutch woman because he started using knives.